John the Pupil Read online

  The physician here dispenses herbs not for their healing powers but for their abilities to be taken in sweet-tasting wine that transports its drinkers to false perpetual dreams, like the lotus-eaters that Herodotus saw in Libya.

  And there are butchers and bakers and common women, who have made another village by the side of the principal one, from which they have diverted the river into a stream to wash their clothes that have been soiled by the tired lusts of the voluptuaries.

  • • •

  Saint Laurence’s Day

  Last night Brother Daniel entered my dreams. I had been delivering justice to my companions of the journey. Brother Andrew was become a ferryman, Brother Bernard appointed to a place of gems and song; the donkey Bernard was given his freedom and released into a field where a female donkey waited to be his dam. Brother Daniel interrupted my tribunal. He was naked and shivering and blood dripped from his wounds. I was angry with him, and I demanded to know what gave him the right to enter my dreams.

  My martyrdom gives me the right, he said and instantly I was sorry.

  When I awoke, I was shivering, despite the heat of the day. His nail I buried with him. Mine, I pray beside.

  The hills and mountains are far behind. I walk down through the lowlands along a path that further descends towards a lake. The sun shines on the water and it is beautiful.

  I have learned from Brother Andrew; part of his spirit has entered me, become mine. I hurled myself into the water, longing for immersion. I remained submerged within it until my breath could hold no longer, and I rose, splashing to the surface, breathing great sobs of air, and the water was no longer cold, all was the same, water, and sky and sun, and I felt the lightness of the newly baptised.

  I thought I saw someone towards the centre of the lake, yellow hair shining in the sun. I waded further out and submerged myself again; I discovered a small capacity to swim by agitating my arms and legs, but then I could no longer touch the bottom of the lake when I attempted to stand, and this frightened me, so I regained the shallows with much labour and displacement of water, some of which I swallowed.

  I looked to where the figure had been but I did not see him; the surface of the water was undisturbed.

  Saint Tiburtius’s Day

  Tiburtius was commanded that he should go barefoot upon burning coals or else do sacrifice to the idols and he made the sign of the cross upon the coals and went on them barefoot, and he said, It seems as if I go upon rose flowers in the name of Our Lord Jesus Christ. And Fabian the provost decried this as sorcery, because, as he said, it was well known that this Jesus Christ was a teacher of sorcery, and Tiburtius was angry at the provost who dared to speak such a holy sweet name, which enraged Fabian the provost, who commanded the head of Tiburtius to be smote off, and in this way was he martyred.

  Here in Viterbo, a dreadful melancholy has assaulted me, which I have salved with hellebore diluted with honey, but still I am weary, seem to be on the slope of an abyss.

  I found a quiet place on a narrow lane, where I sat and tried to cast my mind back into the friary when I would be contemplating the itinerary map. To imagine myself there imagining this was a greater remedy than the hellebore.

  It has been prophesied that this is where I shall meet my death. I may not die. I have my mission to complete. Perhaps this is why I proceed to write, on these last shreds decorated with Bernard’s beasts: the tree with the face of the shrew and the tail of a fish, the cloud with the Devil’s face, the bush that blossoms wolf-heads for flowers, the dog that walks on its hind legs and has the wings of an angel or an eagle. The author of a chronicle may not die, just so long as he refuses to stop writing.

  • • •

  Building works, and men with all kinds of costumes, and crowded lanes, and the companionship of a pale-eyed dog who inexplicably is trying to be my friend, and the street opens into an enormous square like the river finding the sea.

  Conscious of my humble state, I waited beneath the steps along with mendicants and pilgrims and cripples. Some great men walked past us, showed letters of credential to the gatekeeper, were granted admission up to the Loggia, which is a wide stone terrace that looks down over the city walls. We, the humble ones, waited, and some at the head of us were turned away and others joined our numbers, so that by the time the sun had travelled a third of the way across the sky, there were more of us than when I had arrived, and I was further from ascending the stairs.

  I do not know if it was a timidity that kept me there so long, or a reluctance to meet the fate consequent upon the ending of my journey, or the knowledge that I would prove to be unworthy of the attentions of the Pope, as well as the trust of my master, but I stood there, with my dog for companionship, pressed by beggars and petitioners and cripples and sleek young men in dark robes who know how to navigate through an ocean of the hopeful towards the touch of the Pope.

  A dog may not receive an audience with the Pope. When there was a changing of the guards at the top of the stairs, the ones whose position had been relieved seemed to take delight in driving a rough way through the petitioners, and found sport in hurling kicks and stones at my pale-eyed dog until he fled and another companion had been driven from me. I could see him, crooked and beaten, waiting for me in the centre of the square where the throng was less.

  He needed comfort, and his small understanding had settled on me as the one who might provide it. I had even given him a name, Andrew’s. But this event, which afforded me the opportunity to delay further the consummation of my mission so that I might provide succour to an innocent, prompted me instead, for reasons I did not understand, to drive on. I took the avenue that the soldiers had opened, and which had not yet been entirely closed. Imprecations attended my progress, which did not abate, rather increased, when I showed my credentials to the guard at the stairs, which granted me access to the Loggia, and then there was a short time watching labourers at work upon the construction of a fountain and the sight through arches of Italy stretching out below, and then a different attendant took me into the Palace, where he instructed me to wait just inside the entrance.

  The attendant returned with a Secretary, a narrow man in black Dominican robes who wore no beard but whose face showed the design of it. He studied me without looking directly at me, and hesitated, and read again the Pope’s letter to my master with my master’s annotations upon it and, finally, seemed to have settled some dispute in my favour, as if his search inside me had been rewarded by the sight of something previously hidden. And I wondered what it was that he had seen, and why he had taken so long to discover it, and which agency had had the power to bury it.

  He led me through the Conclave, so much magnificence, where great men sat in the seats carved out beneath wide windows, where craftsmen on ladders painted flowers and lions on the walls, where waiting servants kneeled and great men walked slowly together, circles of power that obeyed their own laws of motion, like the constellations of stars.

  At the far end of the Conclave were three stone steps leading up to a wooden door, which the Secretary knocked upon, three quick, almost angry raps that agitated me almost as much as the suddenness of my progress through the Palace.

  Wait, he said.

  The door opened, and the Secretary went through to the next room, and I waited, tried to form myself in humility and tranquillity as if for a great ordeal. The Pope, more than a king, is greater than a man.

  The Secretary returned. He pulled at my sleeve and winced at the touch of it, the lowness of the cloth, its holes and shreds and stains.

  His Holiness will see you. Approach his chair with your head bowed. Kneel before him, kiss his foot with due reverence. He will then, if he finds you worthy, command you to stand. Rise to your feet, kiss his ring. Do not initiate any conversation. If he is interested to hear you talk, he will ask you questions.

  So much to gaze upon in the next room, a dining table larger even than Cavalcante’s in the centre, on which two servants were laying out golden gobl
ets and jewel-handled knives, where the air was scented by glass bowls containing rose petals suspended on water, the colours of all things shifting so I could not tell if the patterns were from the glass or the light shining in shafts through the windows or my own disorder of senses.

  We walked through another doorway, into a smaller, square room that I expected to be empty, it should not be so easy to reach the Pope’s chamber, it should require more than just the opening of doors. The walls were hung with tapestries red and gold. On one was pictured a Last Supper, Christ flanked by Peter and Paul, trees and vines around them, the celestial city behind them, and, blasphemously, I fancied myself in the picture, with my two companions of blessed memory, resting on our way to the Papal Palace. There was a bed in the middle of the room, covered by a cloth of red brocaded roses, with leaves embroidered in gold and trimmed in green. Red cushions and red carpets, and a servant, whom I at first took for a statue kneeling beside a magnificent wooden throne, the image of a peacock carved on one side, its panels blazing with emeralds and sapphires and pearls.

  Approach, the Secretary said.

  In all the glory of the furnishings, I had not noticed the man on the throne, who sat there, so slight.

  I approached him as I had been instructed to. The ring he offered me was loose and heavy on his finger. Pope Clement, in a larger voice than I would have thought his body could contain, invited me to stand.

  I offered him my letter of credential but he did not consent to receive it. The servant rose, poured a glass of wine, which he sipped from, and then wiped the lip of the goblet and bowed, offering it to the Pope, who took one taste from it and placed it with great care and some tremor on the table beside him.

  Read it to me, he said.

  I did as he instructed and after I had done so, he said,

  Your accent is strange. I had expected you to be French. You are not French.

  Because this was not a question, I did not say anything in response. The Secretary threw one last suspicious look upon me and left the room, walking backwards. The servant followed him out.

  You have come a long way to see me. I hope it is worth it.

  I wished to tell him something of my journey. I wished to tell him how changed I have been by it, in ways I still can not understand nor count. I wished to tell him about my brothers, my former companions, the disputes and discords we shared, the love we found. I wished to tell him about Brother Andrew, his beauty, how all living things love him, and Brother Bernard, who is strong and moody, and yet will weep at the mountains. And I wished for the two of us to make a prayer for poor martyred Brother Daniel, the second messenger. And I wished to take his hand, so pale, so insubstantial, and warm it with mine. Instead, because his remark was not a question, I did not reply to it, following the Secretary’s instructions.

  You have some things for me, the Pope said.

  And I wished to tell him about our adventures as the Pope’s Friars, because I hoped they might amuse him.

  First take some wine. Then tell me about your master’s book, he said.

  He shut his eyes when he listened to me talk. I told him about the wisdom of my master, the prodigious discoveries he has made, in so many directions, in the naming and movement of the stars, the reckoning of time, the construction of mirrors and lenses, the secrets of language and life and gold.

  All these things are propitious, the Pope said.

  And I told him of the falsehoods that have fallen into our translations of the holy books, and about the manufacture of engines of fire.

  Your master says you are to perform a demonstration.

  I had been carrying an instrument. It, like much else, has not survived our journey.

  We will need to be outside, in the sunlight, I told him.

  There is a private door in Clement’s room, which we had to bow to pass through, the Pope’s hand on my arm because he is not strong enough to walk unaided. It took us out on to a terrace, where the Pope, so small, so fragile, seemed to shrink further.

  I explained the mechanism, the arm and apparatus that were missing, I took the lens out from the parchment that I had wrapped it inside for safe-keeping and held it to catch the rays of the sun.

  This is a machine for routing our enemies? the Pope said.

  A model for a much larger one.

  For who has despised the day of small things, the Pope said.

  This instrument will harness the sun, I said.

  I looked for an object to destroy and chose the shred of parchment. The lens caught the sun and directed it on to the parchment, where the sun’s rays gathered on to a small part of the page.

  You see how the parchment darkens? This small spot here? It begins to change. Matter will become fire.

  The Pope narrowed his eyes, widened them again, and further narrowed them. I hoped this was in response to my demonstration.

  All I can see is the outline of some monstrous beast. You saw this on your journey? In a forest maybe?

  That is nothing.

  Bernard’s madness for drawing had polluted many of my pages, including this one.

  No, I said. If you look at the beast’s paw, there, the page begins to blacken.

  Obediently, Pope Clement tried to look past the monstrous drawing on the page. He changed his position. I had to instruct him not to block the passage of the sun’s light with his body. He resumed his former position and a cloud passed in front of the sun, and then another.

  This is a model only. The final engine will be a hundred times greater.

  I am sure it will be glorious, the Pope said to assuage our frustration.

  We returned inside. The Pope took his seat again with a heaviness that I did not think he possessed. He rubbed his insufficient eyes.

  Here, I will show you, I said.

  I held the lens up to him. Look through this, I said.

  He looked through the glass. I suggested he move it this way and that to find the best distance of focus and before he was able to see the scorch mark on the beast’s paw, his arm lowered: he was not strong enough to hold the glass for long.

  I explained how the machine would be erected on a hillside overlooking the armies of the enemy, but I think he was contemplating the ruins of his body rather than the routing of his enemies and my words fell unheeded at his feet.

  I held the glass for him and he looked through it once more, this time with his left eye, the other eye shut with one unsteady hand held over it.

  I can see you now, he said.

  You are very young, he said. Show me your letter again.

  I passed him my letter of credential and he read it through the lens that I held for him. He read with delight, not so much as a response to the words on the page but in the joy of a failed capacity renewed.

  Your master says you are a virgin, sinless. Is that still the case?

  As I tried to compose an answer, the Pope’s Secretary came into the room. He knelt before Clement.

  We must pursue the work of the day, the Secretary said picking up the first of the letters he had brought in and beginning to read,

  Your High Holiness, in sympathy and respect, I offer—

  But the Pope interrupted the Secretary.

  I shall read them myself, he said.

  Clement looked through the glass as before. He had me hold the lens in front of his left eye, and he made some show of finding the best distance from eye to glass to page before reading the letter, saying some of the words out loud in a performance that reminded me of when I was in the schoolroom and we took turns to demonstrate our cleverness.

  We will discuss replies later. I still have some matters to transact with this young man.

  The Secretary stared at me as he left the Pope’s room.

  The Pope proceeded to read,

  This is the record of the purchase of five parrots from a merchant in Toulouse.

  And this is the design for further rooms to be built to the palace.

  And these are bills from my physici
ans.

  And this is a pledge of friendship from Charles of Anjou.

  And these are complaints about the cruelty and rapacity of Charles of Anjou.

  And this is a report of the movements of the renegade Conradin.

  This is from an emissary to a Tartar king. We are discussing an alliance against the Saracens.

  And this is a statement of accounts of the Papal exchequer.

  He looked away from the glass. He dropped the hand that had been covering his closed eye as if he was yielding to a great load.

  May I keep the glass?

  A sinner may not refuse the Pope. His noble face, like a starving lion’s, smiled, and lines opened and stretched on his skin in channels and gullies.

  What other miracles do you and your master have for me?

  And I told him about some of the engines that my master has written of both in my book and in Daniel’s.

  I related how my master reveals how to construct an ever-burning lamp, which was the secret lost to the Jews after the destruction of the first temple. And how to make an instrument from a year-old hazel twig that will vibrate to the natural powers of the earth. And how to distil a powder that is antidote to the most deadly snake bite and how to devise weapons of coercion and submission. One, I told him, infuses the air with the heated sap of a plant so your enemies will be stupefied and put to flight. Another is a potion that they may abdicate their will, and desire anything they are directed to. And as well as his burning lens, he has devised other engines of war, flying machines, the consuming fire that no water can extinguish, or the crack louder than thunder that Gideon employed to defeat the Midianites.

  These apparatuses are built?, or are they children’s toys like this other? What is your flying machine?